Scripture (2018.03.11 Sermon)

March 11th, 2018 | John Chandler

John Chandler continues our Lent series on Patterns: Five Habits for Weaving a Life Like Jesus with a sermon on reading Scripture.
Resources/Quotes:

“I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion – and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don’t need anymore! I find in your Bible are unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There’s nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world put alongside it.” — An Unnamed Hindu

The Bible is not an end but a beginning; a precedent, not a story. Its being embedded in particular historic situations has not deterred it from being everlasting. Nothing in it is surreptitious or trite. It is not an epic about the life of heroes but the story of every man in all climates and all ages. Its topic is the world, the whole of history, containing the pattern of a constitution of a united mankind as well as guidance toward establishing such a union. It shows the way to nations as well as to individuals. It continues to scatter seeds of justice and compassion, to echo God’s cry to the world and to pierce man’s armor of callousness. — Abraham Joshua Heschel